France has had a complex relationship with the United States since the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which recognized U.S. independence from Britain and put an end to the Revolutionary War. While France is the only major European country that has never been formally at war with the United States (unlike Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain, for instance), the two countries came dangerously close on at least one occasion, the XYZ affair which led to the 1798–1800 “Quasi-War.” In France’s war with Britain, the French navy was capturing neutral American ships in the Caribbean. “XYZ” were three diplomats employed by Talleyrand, the French foreign minister, to strike an agreement with American counterparts. Talleyrand demanded a large bribe, which U.S. President John Adams refused to pay. The dispute ended with a France-U.S. convention in 1800.
There have been some bumps over the years, and the return of Donald J. Trump to the White House is the latest challenge to a relationship that is marked by a high degree of mutual respect but occasionally produces disappointment on both sides of the Atlantic. The runup to the Iraq war in 2003 revealed a deep rift between the Bush administration and French diplomats, who anticipated the near-impossibility of creating a liberal democratic nation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. In 2013, the Obama administration’s reluctance to bomb Syria despite promises of consequences should Bashar al-Assad’s army use chemical weapons also left the French wondering how reliable an ally the United States truly was.
Nevertheless, while France has now become – much like the U.K. – a “middle power,” Americans still see it as a major European partner. With its nuclear deterrent as well as one of the most professional armies on the continent, France is able to project power on relatively short notice in various parts of the world. France also maintains a number of security commitments through treaties of mutual assistance, often with its former colonies (though many of these security arrangements have recently been contested, particularly in the Sahel). These French security arrangements complement U.S. involvement around the globe. The French have, for instance, come to see the U.S. “pivot to Asia,” initiated under Obama, as an invitation to France to strengthen its security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific. France maintains a presence in this region, now an area of major strategic importance, through its overseas territories, notably Réunion Island and New Caledonia.
Only a few months into the current administration, Trump 2.0 is already proving to be far more disruptive to the transatlantic relationship, and the liberal world order more generally, than what came before. While it has yet to carry out its threat to pull out of NATO, the Trump administration has engaged in a dialogue with Russia that has left European allies blindsided.
On Ukraine, Trump’s move to engage with Russia through bilateral negotiations, thus formally excluding Ukraine and also its European partners, represents a major about-face in U.S. foreign policy. It appears that U.S. policy in Ukraine reflects the whims of the President, not a consensus among policymakers and members of Congress. Trump’s fascination with autocrats of all stripes explains his desire to strike a deal with Vladimir Putin. A negotiated ceasefire and ultimately a peace agreement in Ukraine are very elusive at this point, given Russia’s maximalist demands and Putin’s desire to subjugate Ukraine in its entirety.
Disturbingly enough, Trump’s outreach to Russia has happened concurrently with more aggressive rhetoric toward European allies. The Trump administration has had a series of tense conversations with the Danish government over the fate of Greenland. While it is not clear how far the United States will go with respect to Greenland, the statements made by President Trump, Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio have set off alarm bells in European capitals. The Trump 2.0 administration has not spared even its closest ally in Europe, the U.K. Vance has made comments about “random countries” which “have not seriously fought a war in decades.” This prompted the U.K. to release on social media Defence Ministry pictures of British caskets being flown back from Afghanistan.
France was not targeted until early May. At the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the capitulation of Nazi Germany, Trump made childish jabs and historical misrepresentations. To accentuate America’s role in the Allied victory, he launched into a bizarre tirade that disparaged France’s role in World War II while mocking President Macron’s accent in English.
Trump’s lack of appeal to left, right and centre
Trump is unpopular in Europe, and France is no exception. He is a natural foil for the French left, but is also unappealing to voters in the centre who joined voters from the left in electing Emmanuel Macron to the presidency in 2017 and 2022. On the right, the populist anti-immigrant bloc initially sought to embrace Trump but has reverted to a more natural anti-Americanism. When the leader of the National Rally (formerly National Front), Marine Le Pen, approached then-candidate Trump in the fall of 2016, she was left waiting in the lobby of Trump Tower.
There may be deeper reasons than Trump’s carelessness that day for the lack of affinity between the American nativist right and the French far right. Unlike other populist movements in Europe, the French far right has not completely broken with the post–World War II consensus on the welfare state, with its high levels of social spending and taxation. In her tireless chase for working-class votes, Marine Le Pen has emphasized her commitment to the publicly funded pension system, which has been under significant financial strain in recent years. Macron and his former Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, rammed a highly controversial pension reform through the National Assembly in 2023, over much resistance from the labour unions, parties on the left – and the National Rally.
Trump’s brutal social policy cuts are deeply offputting to the French. Past comments by Valérie Pécresse, a former French minister who now chairs the Île-de-France Regional Council, on the need to establish a “comité de la hache” (“chainsaw committee”) with a view to dramatically slashing public spending were poorly received, even on the right.
Overall, French public opinion has yet to completely fragment into the media silos that made the rise of Donald Trump possible. However, there are signs that this might be in the offing. In recent years, the rise of Fox-esque outlets such as BFM-TV and Cnews has contributed to polarization of France’s media landscape.
A traditional far right appears to be attuned to the MAGA nativist appeals. Once confined to Vichy apologists and imbued with nostalgia for the colonial empire, this right has capitalized on a latent backlash against immigration from the Maghreb. Promoting a traditional (indeed reactionary) view of French society, not fundamentally different from the views on immigration of Trump and his acolytes, it is represented by Éric Zemmour, a high-profile journalist turned politician, and his onetime ally Marion Maréchal, Marine Le Pen’s niece. They failed to make significant inroads in the 2022 presidential election, in which Zemmour was a candidate, and the 2024 snap legislative election. A large group of mainstream conservative voters (e.g. Les Republicains) agree with them on matters of identity. However, these conservatives are too fiscally intent on cutting social spending for Le Pen voters, who now overwhelmingly hail from the working class.
Because a large majority of the French disapprove of Trumpism (though not of French manifestations of populism), Trump’s return to the White House has not aggravated electoral cleavages. Arguably, the most serious threat to the institutions of the Fifth Republic is the large public debt and high taxes. Neither the far left (La France Insoumise led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a populist dependent on the Muslim vote) nor the far right (led by Marine Le Pen, a populist dependent on working-class “Français de souche”) has been able to govern, particularly as the two-party system has given way to a tripartite system, in which the centre shows signs of electoral weakness. Combined, La France Insoumise and the National Rally control two thirds of the deputies. Neither has faith in the institutions of the French version of liberal democracy, to put it mildly.
Challenges and opportunities for Europe
Trump 2.0 is much more of a problem for French foreign policy than it is for domestic politics. In November 2016, Gérard Araud, French ambassador to Washington, tweeted “Un monde s’ecroule” (“The world as we know it is crumbling”). This time, French officials had been preparing themselves for a Trump victory at the highest levels. But a conversation I had recently with a senior diplomat in charge of North America at the Quai d’Orsay, held after Trump was inaugurated, hinted that the barrage of announcements – on Greenland, Russia and China – far outpaced the ability of French and European diplomats to adapt and mount an effective response. This was to be expected, being the same modus operandi the Trump administration employed back in 2017 – announcements made to “flood the zone” (as Steve Bannon put it a few years ago), which were (then) rarely followed up with specific policy decisions. Cue the Greenland drama, which has receded from the headlines since February and March.
But with the challenges come some genuine opportunities to assert some form of European “hard power.” No doubt, French diplomacy will continue in the future to emphasize a strong transatlantic relationship and support for NATO as a core principle of foreign policy – indeed, support for NATO has remained central to French foreign policy since the founding of the military alliance. De Gaulle’s rhetoric on French national independence never included France withdrawing from NATO. and he offered his support for the United States during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in unambiguous terms. Strong support for NATO was never at odds with the building of a common European defence policy, something France’s European partners misguidedly believed in the past.
What has obviously changed since is Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, launched in 2014 and dramatically ramped up with the “special military operation” in 2022. Trump’s reelection and his embrace of Putin earlier this year have proved France right to some extent in the eyes of its European allies. Beyond preservation of the transatlantic alliance and concurrent bolstering of European defence spending, the French have long been making the case for a form of “strategic autonomy.” But the contours of that policy have remained fuzzy and were often interpreted by France’s European allies of as a way to reassert French primacy in military and diplomatic terms. Nevertheless, all NATO European countries – starting with France – understand that European defence policy suffers from a problem of collective action. Everyone benefits from a commitment to collective security, but no one intends to carry the financial and military burden.
Until last November, the United States singlehandedly solved that problem through troop commitments and deployment of advanced weapons in Europe. Though Trump is unlikely to withdraw nuclear warheads from their storage facilities in Europe, he is likely to bring home some of the troops currently stationed in Germany and Italy. He attempted to do just that before the end of his first term, but was prevented by some of his aides who worried about the potential damage to U.S. credibility in matters of security and the U.S. commitment to European security under the terms of the NATO charter. While defence spending is significant at the European scale, and is clearly on an upward trajectory, European countries vary in their ability to deploy troops and project power outside their borders. On the mainland, France remains the sole power able to do this. The main obstacle to French ambitions in matters of security is not really Trump, or even Germany, but the state of France’s public finances. The rise of interest rates on public debt could seriously jeopardize the French government’s plans to rearm or prime the economic pump through increased defence spending.
The next few months (weeks perhaps?) will provide a litmus test for U.S. involvement in Ukraine and broader commitment to European security. In that sense, the changing U.S. strategy offers France an opportunity to create a chain of bilateral alliances that could form the basis of a multilateral agreement in Europe that would not necessarily include the United States. The resurrection of the “Weimar format” centred on France, Germany and Poland points to the emergence of a more durable security arrangement in Europe that would include the U.K. but not the U.S. This arrangement could be layered onto NATO, regardless of the U.S. commitment to NATO itself. Additionally, and equally importantly, France has signed a number of bilateral treaties which include security provisions, as was the case with Germany in 2019, Italy in 2021 and recently Poland (on May 15). This latest agreement is especially significant given the war in Ukraine and the threat that Russia poses to European security. The European Union, which the French have always considered a force multiplier, would likely form the broader institutional framework of this new security arrangement, though it should also be said that the EU treaties already include a clause of mutual protection in case of conflict.
Foreign policy in France has traditionally been a personal affair. Presidents have claimed foreign policy as a “domaine réservé” – a personal constitutional prerogative. This is something that Trump understands and values to some extent, as his repeated claims to have a good personal relationship with Putin suggests. Macron sought to exploit this convention between 2017 and 2020, although ultimately unsuccessfully, since Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accords and the nuclear deal with Iran.
As the new Trump administration challenges institutions and established foreign policy paradigms, it is unclear whether there is room for personal interactions on mutually respectful terms. Trump 2.0 is a much less filtered version of Trump 1.0, and Trump himself may not care so much about engaging countries that are nowhere to be found on his map of great powers. Both Trump and Macron are already “lame duck” presidents, constitutionally barred from running again for office. Macron does not have a majority in Parliament, and Trump will likely lose his majority in the House after the midterm election. Both presumably care about their legacy. At this point, Trump’s legacy may be enough incentive for him to remain interested in the fate of Europe and pursue a fair diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine. Despite his domestic problems, Macron is one of the best-placed leaders in Europe to keep Trump focused on the transatlantic alliance and the fate of the Western democratic model.
